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“He’s older than that, Jessie,” Benny said with amusement. “When a shifter talks about the old days, you have to ask what century, not just what decade. Duncan and his brother came out with the fur traders in the 1500s. So not the 1950s, but the 1550s.”
“Oh.” Jessie considered that, then shook her head. “Makes no difference. The pack stole from those women. And I want them to get justice. And I don’t believe for one moment that it wasn’t deliberate on John McKenzie’s part. He did a land and money grab and got richer for it. Money he then used to make himself a power in the region, and to build up an army of young men for Chen to lead into battle.”
Ryder stared at Jessie.
“Follow the money,” Benny murmured from behind him. “Good job, Jessie. Very good job.”
Chapter 17
Day 159 of the re-emerged Hat Island pack, Wednesday, Nov. 13, Penticton
The pack house wason the east side of Okanagan Lake, north of Penticton. Benny saw the sign for the lake and smiled at the spelling. He wondered if Abby really would write a paper about the significance of the two ways of spelling Okanagan. It was interesting, he admitted. But the Okanogan tribe spelled it with two As and an O, so he’d go with that, in spite of Canada’s insistence that it had all As.
The house was large, and probably mistaken for a lake resort. It was two stories tall, painted a light beige, and had a porch that ran the entire lake side of the house with a balcony above. Lights outlined the shape of the porch and balcony, a beacon for miles. Dennis parked the car on the road side of the house, and they all got out. After Jessie’s analysis there had been little conversation. Benny would have liked a briefing on who was going to be here tonight, but he couldn’t figure out a transition. So, your old Alpha stole from widows and orphans to build an army of recruits intending to overthrow the Tanaka pack and the World Council, and you all didn’t even notice? Hard to go from that to, so what’s for dinner?
Damn it, he’d like Jessie to be a part of Abby’s inner circle. She had a sharp mind. She’d benefit from Abby’s mentoring, and Hat Island could use a person with a mind like that — for an intelligencer service. Admit it, he told himself, that’s what you’re heading toward. Abby as the Chairman of the Northwest Council was going to need an intelligencer service — not just one man on call when one was needed like Alpha Johannsen had — well, he’d had more than one man — but Abby was going to need a professional-level organization. He wondered what Ito was putting together for the World Council, and whether that was enough for both packs.
No, he decided, in that silent 20 minutes to the pack house. Hat Island would need its own intelligence. Intelligence to be shared with the World Council, to be sure. But just the fact that Cujo thought there were things Abby hadn’t been told and needed to know told him that she was going to need her own men. Men she could trust.
Men and women, he amended, because Jessie had just done as sharp an analysis as anyone he’d even seen. Maybe sharper, because she looked at it from a different perspective than most men did. He hadn’t thought to wonder about what happened to the women and children and all the property. And he’d been thinking about where did all of these young men come from for weeks now.
He smiled. So his student, another young woman, put together a shifter census and posited that someone has figured out how to make humans with latent genes into shifters. And now another young woman figures out how that shifter army was being funded?
Maybe skip the men and just hire women.
Something made him pause in that. Was that what Abby was doing? Girls Who Howl? A women’s book club? Ideas that women suggested, and Abby ran with.
Damn it. Shewas. She was figuring out a communication network that didn’t violate first rule and didn’t risk the exposure that writing things down would. He felt a moment of admiration, then doubt. Was she doing it deliberately? Or was it just another form of a dandelion burst? An instinct to make connections.... He really did need to talk to her about that first chance.
But before he could really come to any conclusions — about anything, anything at all — they were there. And damn, this was a beautiful place. Maybe Ryder needed to reconsider living out here. If it was south of Penticton instead of north, he’d talk him into it. But Ryder did need to be close to the Okanogan, he was right about that.
The pack house sat up on a bluff overlooking the lake; across the road the land continued uphill. The house was large, and like Duncan’s house, there were cabins scattered about on both sides of the road. “Does the pack own the other side of the road too?” Benny asked Duncan as they all got out of the car.
Duncan nodded. “We own a lot of it,” he agreed. “And a lot of the shoreline.” He pointed eastward to the other side of the road. “Grapes. We’ve got our own winery. That’s one of our latest ventures.” He glanced at Jessie and away.
Jessie had made him feel guilty, Benny thought. Well, maybe he should, although Benny thought it was more complicated than that. He’d lost sons and grandsons, he’d said. He had all these women and children to care for. And that was another aha moment, in itself. Keep the remaining members of the pack busy caring for the widows and orphans so that they couldn’t ask questions?
